


the world's still spinning around, we don't know why

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Game, Simulation AU, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 10:03:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13611054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: One cold, unimportant night, Saihara jumps from a bridge, fully aware that he'll be leaving behind his two lovers. Out of luck or misfortune, he wakes up in the hospital. And they all have to continue on.





	the world's still spinning around, we don't know why

The first time Saihara tried to kill himself, it was in a blaze of glory; deafened by cannon-fire, squinting in the vague sunlight of the Ultimate Academy as Kiibo destroyed the glass, Tsumugi, and then himself. It’s strange – many times in his short life had he prepared himself for the inevitability of death, but in a scenario as hopeless – _no, meaningless –_ as this, he didn’t expect to survive. So, stumbling out of the rubble, hand in hand with Maki and Himiko, he didn’t know how to move forward.

When the second time rolls around, he knows that he can’t fail again. There are no longer cameras monitoring his every move, despite his paranoia that he is still being watched, and his cynicism tells him that this will not be the grand death that he craved months ago. Team Danganronpa will not crumble alongside his broken body; he will not become a martyr of a beautiful cause. Nothing will even shift mildly out of place in the world.

But, for once, Saihara isn’t doing this for the world. He’s doing this for himself, and he feels more connected to the boy he saw in his application video than he has since leaving the clutches of the game. This, he knows, is freeing. Finally, his blood and bones will form themselves into a key and unlock the chains that Team Danganronpa still has wrapped around him; he’s had enough of them telling him what he can and can’t do, stripping and cutting at his personality for interviews. Fuck them. He can kill himself on his own terms.

He stands on the edge of some unnamed bridge that he found on one of his night-time walks, feeling – he knows for the last time – the wind in his hair. Last week, he cut a lot of it off; the length of it all just reminded him of the trope they’d forced him into in the game, and he wanted to be different. Now, he just wants to be dead.

Thinking of Momota and Harukawa, back at their shared apartment, he can’t bring himself to shed a tear for them. In fact, his mind ardently tells him that they’ll be better off in the end; they’re both dealing with the fallout of the game in different ways, and having Saihara around would only drag them back to the memories that they wish they could erase. It’s funny – Team Danganronpa won’t be so kind as to help them out with that.

He takes his hip flask out of the inner pocket of his jacket and shakes it next to his ear; enough left to give him that final burn of courage to jump. Swallowing it in one, harsh gulp, he throws the flask far over the side of the bridge, counting two and a half seconds before it silently splashes into the freezing water below.

Two and a half seconds. That’s all he’ll have to contemplate his decision, an unlikely amount of time for him to feel any regret. No – he’s excited. Feeling the entire earth hanging in orbit, his chest light and flying away from him, his breath and voice lost to an intangible wind; jumping off this bridge will be the best experience he’s ever had. And how fitting, to end his life with something that will make him happy, especially considering the depression that he’s had to endure for so long.

For a moment, he feels on the cusp of happy – not quite there, but skirting across the border like skimming pebbles across the smooth surface of a lake in summer; seeing the sun and knowing that he should be warm, but not being able to feel the heat. That’s how his mind is, and it’s a lot better than the static spiral of his regular depression.

Allowing himself to just sit in the night air for a moment, he swings his legs over the barrier of the bridge and sits loosely on the top. The wind on his face is gentle; he imagines that it’s the softness of the last wisps of his life giving him comfort in death. Saihara has always fantasised of death, and not necessarily always in a depressive way. The concept itself just fascinates him; how every moment of everything can just be snuffed out, and how the only way to truly know the aftermath is to live through an irreversible change of state.

He remembers something about black holes – probably something Momota told him in the game; if he were to fall through one, and live, he may emerge on the other side through an equal white hole – but whereas a black hole only absorbs, a white hole only emits. Simply put, anyone who falls through a black hole can never return.

And Saihara fantasises that the permanency of death would be like that.

Of course, he permits himself one last cigarette before he ventures into the inevitable. If he didn’t know his own mind so well, he’d think that he was stalling, but really, he just wants to savour the last feeling he’ll ever have. The ecstasy of an imminent suicide.

He watches as he flicks ash into the already murky water that will soon be his grave. There’s nobody around to stop him; musing on thoughts of Momota and Harukawa, fast asleep at home, he smiles in his last moments. Although, in this mental image, Momota will be drunk and Harukawa will have lost a lot of her money to the late-night casinos, Saihara has to believe that they’ll overcome that one day.

They’ll have to – for him.

Finally, having spent his last few moments in the bliss of waiting, he hoists himself up so he’s standing on the edge of the bridge. Takes a deep breath. Jumps. Falls.

He barely has time to start a countdown of two and a half seconds before he feels the stabbing embrace of cold water like thick, hard concrete; vaguely, it hits him feet first, and then begins to burn around the rest of him. Something in his mind feels _wrong –_ he planned to die on impact, so he can’t understand why he’s still thinking and feeling; he’s immobile as he sinks down beneath the waves.

After a brief moment of confusion, his vision begins to blur. Were he able to feel anything except the pain of his brittle body burning up like a malfunctioning rocket re-entering the atmosphere, he would have noticed the way his mouth fills with water.

But the world, seen only from the murky perspective of an underwater almost-corpse, begins to grey out from the outside inwards. His vision dissipates completely, and he gives way to irresistible darkness.

He wakes in an uncomfortable hell. Expecting fire and brimstone, all those things he was taught were awaiting him for destroying himself, he instead finds that he opens his eyes to blinding white. Heaven seems to be a laughable alternative that he’ll never reach, so he forces himself to blink in his surroundings until they become clearer.

A hospital. A goddamned hospital.

And…pain. It hits him a few seconds after he wakes, like there’s an inherent disconnect between his mind and body, and he wants to scream but he finds that nothing comes out. No voice, no protest, no unintelligible stream of curses at the fact that he’s alive.

Just nothing.

He does, however, still have his ability to hear. And that’s what he focuses on; since the view his eyes are giving him is far less than pleasant, he squeezes them shut again and allows the thick beep of, presumably, his heart monitor fill his body with each pulsating noise.

“Saihara,” he hears, and struggles to place the voice, only knowing that he recognises it somehow, “did you just wake up? Fuck, tell me you just –”

“Momota, stop shouting. Are you sure you saw him wake up?”

“I swear it, Harumaki. He opened his eyes for a few seconds.”

“Why didn’t I see?”

“You were too busy checking the damn horse racing results on your phone.”

“Fuck off, not in here, keep _quiet.”_

“Whatever. Saihara, wake up!” Momota says again. Saihara recognises the name, the voice, but he can’t understand why Momota would be in a hospital with him. And Harukawa too. Unless – he can’t bear to think it – unless he _failed._ He opens his eyes again, and takes in the sight of Momota looking directly at him.

“Thank _fuck,”_ he says, “we thought you were gone for good.”

“I…” Saihara starts to say, but his voice collapses again; it feels raw, like he can still somehow taste saltwater. It’s not something that he suspects will ever go away.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Harukawa says.

“He can’t talk, remember,” Momota says, “the doctor said.”

“I don’t care. Pulling a goddamn stunt like that, you had us worried to death.”

“Don’t…talk about death, Harumaki.”

“We’re all far too acquainted with it to skirt around it.”

Saihara gives them a pleading look; if they could just stop arguing for once, they could help him understand what the hell is going on. He should be dead, he jumped from a bridge into freezing water with nobody around to save him, and surviving that is possibly the worst stroke of luck he’s ever had, even worse than getting accepted into season 53 of Danganronpa.

“I know that look,” Momota says, “you’re thinking. You want to know something.”

“He probably wants to know what’s going on,” Harukawa replies, and Momota shoots her a faint smile.

“Right, yeah,” he says, “well, I mean, you remember…what you did?”

Saihara tries to nod, but winces instead. Momota gets the message anyway.

“You were lucky, the doctor said you must’a hit the water feet first. Any other position and you’d be…well, I don’t wanna talk about that. But you started drowning and thank fuck someone was around to see you ‘cause he pulled you out and called an ambulance. You died for like, a minute. But we got you back.”

Harukawa nods. “We got you back,” she says, “and you’re never doing that again. You won’t be able to talk for a bit, I don’t know the details but something to do with inhaling saltwater fucked up your throat. And, uh…”

“Harumaki,” Momota lays one of his hands over hers, “don’t push yourself. I’ll tell him.”

Saihara wants to scream at them to stop skirting around the truth and get to the point. There’s obviously something they’re withholding, and from their grave expressions, it’s something bad. He just wants to know.

“Well,” Momota says, “‘cause you hit feet first, you broke like, a lot of bones. And yeah, you’re alive, so that’s all that matters, but…the doctor said you’re probably not gonna walk again.”

He takes back his earlier thought – he doesn’t want to know this. He just wants to slip back into death; having had a taste of the beauty of greying out into infinity, it’s not enough that he has to live again, but the universe has to mock him by making him feel more of a burden on his lovers. They’re going to insist on being by his side as he recovers, and then again until he dies, pushing him around in a wheelchair and telling him how _loved_ he is and how _this doesn’t change him –_ he wants to be sick.

“Momota,” Harukawa says, “I think he should sleep now. The doctor will be over in a moment.”

“You’re right.”

“We love you, Saihara,” Harukawa says, “and this doesn’t change that.”

Saihara wants to vomit the contents of his empty stomach right over their promises, but he just closes his eyes and feigns sleep until he hears the doctor adjust something in his IV drip, and he embraces once more an unsatisfactory imitation of death.

Weeks of physical therapy pass by, and Momota and Harukawa spend most of their time in the hospital with him. He learns not to accept, but to adapt. He’ll never be okay, living in the aftermath of a suicide attempt – it just seems out of place, like he carries the shadow of eternal death with him; everything he touches is marred by the fact that he shouldn’t be alive.

He was Saihara Shuichi, ordinary teenage boy; then, Saihara Shuichi, anarchist fighting against Team Danganronpa. Now, he’s just the boy who threw himself off a bridge.

After days of telling Momota that he’s perfectly capable of pushing his own wheelchair, Saihara is finally released from hospital and finds that he’s back in his small apartment with his two lovers, skirting around the subject of suicide like they’d all told each other they’d never do.

Truthfully, he spends most of his time over the next few weeks in bed. Still being weaned off the strong painkillers he’s been taking for his legs, it’s easier to just lie down and sleep for more time than he spends awake.

In his strange liminal state between waking and sleeping, he hears Momota and Harukawa’s voices from the bathroom. He doesn’t doubt that they love each other any less than they always have, but they argue at least once every other day. Sometimes, Saihara feels left out of his own relationships, but it’s strange – either the two of them are completely loved up and impossible to separate, or they’re having shouting matches without caring who hears.

Today seems to be a day of the latter.

“You fucking _swore_ you were taking them!”

“Harumaki,” Momota’s voice is notably softer than Harukawa’s, “I just forgot.”

“What, you forgot for two fucking weeks?”

“We were busy with –”

“Don’t you dare say we were busy with Saihara. There’s no excuse for not taking thirty seconds to swallow a few pills. You were the one who said we were all going to get _better.”_

“We are!”

Harukawa laughs bitterly. “Does this look like getting better to you? What part of _any of this_ seems like even coping to you? You’re drunk ninety percent of the time, I’m shooting myself in the fucking foot with debt and gambling, and he jumped off a goddamn _bridge.”_

“Harumaki…”

“Just take your fucking pills or get out.”

“Fine, see,” Momota spits, “I’ll take them.”

Saihara hears a faint crash on the bathroom floor; he assumes that Momota either dropped or threw his pill case down.

“You _idiot,”_ Harukawa hisses, “now they’re all mixed up.”

“Well why don’t I just take the whole fucking lot of them and get you off my back?”

“Momota,” Harukawa says, audibly softer and less harshly, “don’t even say that.”

“Y-Yeah, sorry. Sensitive subject.”

“Just…here, I’ll help you. I think I know which ones should go where.”

There’s silence for a few moments, as Saihara keenly watches the crack of light from the bathroom door, praying that they don’t come out and see that he’s heard their whole conversation.

“Now take them.”

“Harumaki…I don’t want them.”

“Don’t be stupid. You have to.”

“Well maybe I want to fucking die! We’ve all been so caught up in the past few weeks and I’ve been thinking that maybe Saihara had the right idea.”

“You’re an asshole. A real fucking selfish asshole to even _say_ that. You’ve got five seconds to take them or I’ll force them down your fucking throat.”

“I’ll just throw them up again.”

“Don’t be so stubborn!”

“Whatever.”

“Fine, sabotage yourself. I’m going out.”

As the bathroom door opens, Saihara squeezes his eyes shut and pretends to be asleep.

“What are you doing?” Momota says.

“I’m taking the rest of your pills with me. I’m not leaving you with the lot of them. Just take the ones on the fucking counter and don’t try and off yourself.”

“It’s not like you’d be able to stop me. I know where you’re going. Sure, go on, waste more money fighting a losing battle.”

“We’re all fighting a fucking losing battle, Momota. At least mine isn’t ruining my liver.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fuck you too.”

Harukawa slams the bathroom door behind her and storms away, leaving the apartment with nothing more to say. Saihara knows that Momota was right – she’s going to the casino again; they’ve both tried to stop her in the past, but nothing can deter her. He supposes that they’re all like that.

He hears the bathroom door open again and Momota walks into the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed, surprising Saihara slightly, and he accidentally opens his eyes to see Momota facing him. Fuck.

“You heard that, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m right, though.”

“No, you’re not, Momota.”

“What?”

“She’s got a point. You give us all this talk of believing in us and stuff, but you’re giving it not even the bare minimum when it comes to following through on that with yourself.”

“I just don’t wanna take ‘em, Saihara,” Momota says, “they make me all weird. And when I take them, I just wanna take them all. Shit, sorry. I shouldn’t –”

“Don’t. Stop skirting around the subject, really, it’s pissing me off. Yeah, I jumped off a bridge. Yeah, you wanna take all your pills. Yeah, Harukawa runs herself into exhaustion hoping that she’ll just crash and die. It’s hardly fucking taboo.”

“Y-Yeah, I suppose. You think I was too harsh on her?”

“Probably. But she’ll come back. She loves you.”

“Fuck knows why.”

“Same reason you love her. Same reason you love me,” Saihara says, “just ‘cause you _do._ Finding a reason will only tear you apart.”

“Anyway,” Momota replies, changing the subject awkwardly, “your voice is getting better.”

“My legs aren’t.”

“Yeah, well, we knew that wasn’t gonna happen.”

“Still sucks.”

“Being in a wheelchair isn’t so bad.”

“How would you know? You’re not in one.”

“Suppose so. But your voice _is_ a lot better. How loud can you go now?”

“Uh, a bit louder than this, I guess?”

“Show me.”

“What?”

“Scream as loud as you can.”

“Momota, I’m not doing that.”

“C’mon, I’ll do it if you do it.”

“I still get nothing out of that bargain.”

“It’ll be fun.”

“Fine.”

They both shout at the top of their voices in unison, screaming for a moment or so.

“That was…kinda needed,” Saihara says.

“Yeah. That’s probably why I asked you to do it.”

“At least you’re self-aware.”

“When d’you think she’ll be back?”

“Late, probably,” Saihara says, “you know what she’s like. Did you take your pills?”

“Fuck, not you too.”

“C’mon, Momota. Please?”

“Why?”

“Because you were an asshole to Harukawa. You owe her one.”

“She doesn’t care.”

“How can you even say that? Stop trying to convince yourself that nobody gives a shit about you. I know what game you’re playing, you did it in Danganronpa as well. You put on this front of not needing anyone so that everyone can rely on you and you can rely on no-one. It’s like some fucking hero-complex power trip. Just take your pills and get in bed.”

“Damn. Fine.”

“Thank you,” Saihara says softly.

Momota goes into the bathroom, then returns with the pills in his hand. Standing in front of Saihara to prove that he’s following through on his word, he dry-swallows them all at once.

“There you go,” he says, “happy now?”

“I wouldn’t say _happy._ Satisfied, probably.”

“I wish Harumaki was here,” Momota says, “I might call her.”

“You really think she’ll leave the casino?”

“Maybe not. But I gotta try. It’s like…y’know…I got her out of her Talent Lab, so…”

“That was in a different world, and you know it.”

“I’m trying anyway.”

Momota gets up and pulls his phone out of his pocket. After a moment, he puts it to his ear and walks to the other end of the room.

“Harumaki? Hey,” he says, “I took them. Yes, I promise. Yes, Saihara saw me. I’m sorry too. Can you come home? I know, I know. Please? I need you. Thank you. I love you.”

Putting the phone on the dresser, Momota breathes a sigh of relief as he changes his clothes to something more comfortable. Getting in bed next to Saihara, he gets as close as possible to him. Saihara knows that the only thing that brings Momota out of a depressive episode is physical contact – it’s like he’s convincing himself that he’s real, that he’s not dead any more, that he still has Saihara and Harukawa.

Although Momota closes his eyes, Saihara keeps his open, not feeling tired at all – it’s a strange feeling, since he’s grown accustomed to being lethargic and sleeping on a stomach of vodka and painkillers. Ten minutes later, he hears the door of the apartment gently open and close.

Harukawa enters the room, her hair and clothes soaked. Saihara reasons that it must be raining outside. Silently, she changes into something dry and gets into bed on his other side.

“You tired?”

“Nah,” he replies, “but Momota is.”

“I can tell,” Harukawa looks over Saihara to where Momota is sleeping.

“He’s sorry, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Do you really blame him, though?”

“Not really. That’s the hard part. I see myself in him.”

“We’re all just a bit fucked up, right?”

“A _bit?”_

“I’m being generous,” Saihara forces a small laugh, to which she smiles in return. Both are false, but neither one comments on the fakery of their emotions.

“I do love him,” she says, “he’s just a self-sabotaging idiot these days.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Get lucky tonight?”

“Barely had time to sit down before he called me.”

“Probably for the best.”

“Yeah. I’m still holding out for a winning streak.”

“You won’t find that gambling your life away.”

“I know, I know.”

“I love you both,” Saihara says, and Harukawa nods.

“Me too. Let’s do something…normal tomorrow. Let’s pretend like we’re not all trying to kill ourselves and, I don’t know, cook dinner or something.”

“It would be nice to eat something that’s not packet soup.”

“We could go to the shop together, get you some fresh air, maybe hit the park afterwards and sit in the sun for a bit if it’s not raining.”

“I’d like that.”

Harukawa reaches over Saihara and shakes Momota awake.

“Huh?” Momota grunts.

“We’re going out tomorrow,” she says, “and making dinner like a normal family.”

“Mm,” he says sleepily, “sounds nice. Love you, Harumaki. Love you, Saihara.”

“Love you too,” Harukawa replies.

“Yeah. Love you both,” Saihara says.

Together, they hold each other and drift off to sleep. Saihara, just before he finally succumbs, hears the rain get heavier outside, and he imagines that he’s travelling through a field of cold shooting stars, embracing a new kind of eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this! I think it's interesting to explore the different ways they'd all cope and interact after Danganronpa. Please leave a comment if you liked it!
> 
> (Sidenote: I don't believe that physically disabled people are at all a burden, and I don't condone Saihara's initial thought-process in this. I was just trying to write how I think he'd see himself in the immediate aftermath of becoming physically disabled.)
> 
> Title from 'Champagne Supernova' by Oasis.


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